A Tasmanian farmer has earned a firm ticking-off from France after suggesting people could make their excess rhubarb into champagne.
Guy Robertson from Penguin, in the state’s north-west, has turned his business over to deliveries after losing all of almost his usual sales at traditional farmers’ markets and festivals, restaurants and in on-farm experiences overnight because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
“The first week was the sleepless week,” Mr Robertson said.
“Then we realised we could put everything online.”
The Mount Gnomon Farm website was born – and Mr Robertson is now busy selling meat, vegetables, and fruit online, as well as products from other local artisan producers.
But it was a post on social media that landed him in hot water with the French. He has been including in-season rhubarb in his produce boxes, and suggested anyone who had too much should treat themselves, as he had, by brewing some homemade rhubarb bubbly, which he termed champagne.
A couple of days later, he answered the phone to a French official.
“In the middle of deliveries I received a phone call from a gentleman in France with the threat of legal action about the farm’s production of rhubarb champagne,” Mr Robertson wrote in a Facebook post.…
